Productive Venting vs Fear Barfing: Strategies for managing the adult dynamic of working well with kids

Gillian and Joelle talk about the tension that can emerge in professional teams that are in the midst of intense work and limited time for debrief and connection.  There are some realistic and practical approaches that can help us effectively process our experiences without risking passing our stress on to our colleagues.  For example, there is intentionality in how we use the brief pauses in our day that can shift our overall cognitive and emotional stress.  There is also an art to how to express our responses in a vent that can reduce isolation, release stress, and receive a helpful next step.  

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Gillian: https://www.instagram.com/clearconnectionpsychology/

Joelle: https://www.instagram.com/joelle.vanlent/

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to Stance of Curiosity. I'm Gillian Boudreau. I'm Joelle van Lent. Hi everyone! Hi everyone! Full disclosure, we did just have to stop the Zoom and start it again. So we already said hi, but we're doing it again because that's showbiz, baby! We've already talked about how it's very sunny here in Portland. That's not usually the And it's rainy here. What? We've flip-flopped. Opposite day! What are we going to do? That's nuts! I know of the things I get to do in my kind of school consult practice is something called reflective practice groups, where educators will come in cohorts of six to ten and we'll meet maybe every month. maybe for the whole school year, maybe for half. And we basically just talk about what's coming up that is getting in the way of educators feeling comfortable and confident in their work, which, surprise surprise, is usually quite systemic. Can go back to our first episode ever on navigating impossible expectations to hear more about that. But it really gives me a beautiful opportunity to kind of take the temperature of kind of all over the country, right? What's going on in our schools through the different seasons of the year? And one thing that I'm noticing a is the impact of stressed out adults, right? And how sometimes it's the adult-to-adult connection that I think can burn educators out faster even than a fraught student or several students who folks are struggling with. Do you find that too, Joelle? Yeah, well, and I think part of that has to do with what we expect of our role. And so I think that as a family therapist, I absolutely expect that I will be dealing, not dealing with, I will be working with adults and kids that have a variety of When you are an you're expecting that your students are gonna need a lot from you, but maybe there's an that you don't even realize that you sort of show up thinking that all the other adults are gonna have it generally. together or if they need something, they won't necessarily be needing that from you. Yes, yes, they won't necessarily be needing that from you. Exactly, that's a really good point. So I think part of the stress is feeling pulled away from what you're expecting to be your essential role and responsibilities to respond to things that you didn't think would be part of your role. And I think that anybody who does any kind of helping profession with children knows that children come with adults; they do lots of them. Teenagers too; they come with, and those adults will need you to do all kinds of things to support them. And then we also. have in any job our and they'll need things from us; we'll need things from them. And so I actually feel like when I shifted my expectation to recognize that that was part of my role and part of what I would spend a percentage of every day doing, it didn't feel as burdensome. Yep, yep, that makes a lot of I feel the same way. I feel like our family therapy training is useful here. Certainly, when I first started my school job, I was handed-I was running a behavioral program. So I was handed eight children, all of whom had a history of basically blowing out of class in one way or another. And so on paper, my job was to construct a good enough plan. and support BIs well enough that we could get the kids so they would be able to stay in class longer. That was really the goal of the program. Similar to in family therapy, oftentimes, people, a whole group of folks, will present with one quote unquote identified patient, right? So, people come to family therapy because one kid is having a toileting regression or maybe there's a conflict between one particular parent and one particular kid. But what usually turns out to be the case with family therapy is that there's a lot of unprocessed negative emotion in many members of the family, right? There's usually a much more co-created. stressful dynamic that just happens to be landing on one or two people, creating very obvious symptoms, but that the goal is really to kind of help regulate everybody in the family so that all that emotional contagion can calm down and stop landing in the bodies of whoever was showing up with the symptoms. And so I remember in that first school psych role, I did spend the first year really focused on, let's say, the kids on my caseload as the identified patients, and really trying to do my job as written to just try to get those behaviors to go down. But by the second year, and I think the family training helped me with this, I started thinking of it as oh what if I actually went to every adult around each kid who is having dysregulation and things like that? What if we were able to get each adult around this kid more calmed down, specifically about what this kid might do? Which I think was also just a pivot for me because I'm actually a little bit better at calming down adults than I am knowing exactly how to get someone to stop throwing chairs, right? So it was like a little bit of a better match for my skillset and it worked, right? Like if you can calm down all the adults, the kids will stop throwing chairs excitingly. But it's tricky. It was hard enough for me to make that switch. right. And I had a lot of family therapy training. And so I think that's right. It's like these are very high-pressure jobs where the focus is on. Yeah. Like at least half of school jobs actually are adult work. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, if I think about what you're saying, I also do think that like because you're talking about the beginning of your career. So that made me think about like over the course of my, like, 25 years of being a psychologist in many different capacities, I do think that one of the things that we can control that has contributed to adult stress is that we now have these devices on our

person: 7:15

our phone or our smartwatch. or whatever it might be all the time. And 25 years ago we did not. And even 10 or 15 years ago we didn't. I don't think we had them as locked into our like course of day. And so what I really find interesting is the idea that when you have a very short pause in your day when you're an adult and before you had a personal device that was or you know smart devices that were at the input of information and what our brain and body is incredibly well designed. If you give it a very short period of time with no new information to process, it will sort out the things that are in your working memory and the stuff that doesn't really matter, it will let. go and the stuff that's important for later, it will like file it in file folders. Yes. And then your heart rate will come, and you're if you're anxious that might settle. And also you'll read your brain will realize things like I haven't moved, or I haven't sat, I haven't eaten, or I'm thirsty, or I need to go to the bathroom, and then you'll do those things. And so I think what was happening is that before we had these devices, we had we were still very busy. But we had lots of short periods of time where we downloaded, regulated, and met basic needs. And then we moved into the next like new thing of information. And so there's like a cost of like deferring, deferring, deferring, deferring and then you're driving home and it's the first time that you sorted and your brain is so full of information. And it's all jumbled up like it filed stuff that didn't matter in the wrong file folder or it filed stuff that did matter in the wrong folder or it let stuff go that was important and held on. So it's just like our brain does not work well like that. And there's a lot that's stressing us out right now that we have very little control over but we can actually control the choices that we make in those very short periods of time. Okay, this is brilliant. So it sounds like you're saying that our brain naturally uses small bits of idle time. It sounds to me like to like clear the cache on a computer, right? Or sometimes I think about it as like shaking the Etch A Sketch before you like do a new one. And it's how we process and sort. And I love what you said; that's when we let go of what's not necessary and we categorize what is. And what we do if we jump to a screen in those tiny moments is that we get vortexed into distraction and into dopamine stuff that usually has to do with someone else's life and not ours, right? If we're consuming content or something like that. And so we don't have that time to sort things out. So yeah, by the time you get into the car, hopefully, you're managing not to look at your phone in the car, even though you may be listening to it in the car. And that's the first time that just the tsunami of unprocessed pieces from the day might come and get a person. That's so true. Right? So, like I didn't come up with this, but people will use the metaphor for working memory as the mental surface of the... Yeah. And for some reason, the image that comes up in my mind when I see that is like in a it's like the island, like in your kitchen. I don't know why, but that's what happens for me. So I think of a kitchen island and I think about how when you're going to do Something you need to clear off the counter, the mental surface, and you need to put the new information and new directions on the surface. And then you need to take out of your long-term memory, which in my mind is the cabinet and the fridge. You're pulling out the things that are relevant to what you're about to do. And then you're ready. And so if you've loaded stuff on that counter all day long and people are giving you new stuff, it's all mixed up. And then you go in your long-term memory to pull stuff out, and you don't even know what you're looking for because there's too much. So you might pull stuff out that's not even related to what's. going on. So you really want to think about, like, am I ready for new information? And so sometimes I'll tell people that work together, can you have a code that says I need three minutes? So somebody comes up to you and says, can I talk to you know, can I tell you something real quick? And you can say, I need three minutes, and that's code for I'm clearing my mental surface. Ooh, yes! You know, it never would have occurred to me when I was starting my career to do that. And in the absence of that, you know that we might've talked about it before, but you know, I love Lucy, that famous one where Lucy and Ethel are working on the conveyor belt and they can't they're they're getting behind on the candy. So they have to start just like stuffing it in their mouth. Like that is 100% how I would begin to feel. Cause sometimes it would beyou know like just thing on thing on thing on thing with absolutely no prayer of processing anything at all. And you know I love how sometimes you talk about how important it is and also how rebellious it is. That might be my word more than yours but to to go at the pace of the people in front of you. Yeah. And sometimes not to be super cheesy and like greatest love of all about this but sometimes you are the person in front of you who you need to be judicious. about going the pace of And sometimes that pace is I do need to stop the world for three minutes. And that seems like something you cannot do during a stampede of a school day, but you kind of can. Yeah. Yeah. No, you can. I mean, we always have, unless there's a there's like an urgent safety issue. You know, we have three minutes, and you can say, I'm I need three minutes; I'll come and find you. And then you just walk the long way toward wherever they are. You do a loop and come back. It's just, and then when you get in the car, it's like do you need to listen to your voicemails, or do you need to listen to the radio for for like news or a podcast? Or could You just listen to music or silence for just the first five minutes. Yeah, you don't have to do anything. It's not, it shouldn't feel effortful. Oh, now I have to do that task where I clear my mental surface. No, if you just stop, all you have to do is stop new information, and your brain will just do it. It's, it should be, it's an automatic internal process where your brain just does that. And then you can do, if you needed to call someone, or if you wanted to do something, then you can do that. Just, it's just a few minutes. And so there's a cost of throughout the day deferring that, and then there's an incredible benefit of taking those moments. as many times as you can. And you won't know. It's like the compassion fatigue. You and I have talked about it being like, it's like a very slow buildup, and you don't really know that you're feeling it until it's really big. It's like a frog gradually boiling in a pot. Right? Yep. Yeah, so you're not going to feel tremendously different if you take a handful of those opportunities tomorrow, but you will feel tremendously different in February if you don't. That's right. That's right. Okay, so yeah, one piece, right, of, you know, doing what turns out to be a lot of adult work in these jobs is the adult work with oneself, which is stop the world whenever possible, clear the cache. Don't look. The more stressed we are, the more we tend to look for distractions in even the tiniest breather during the day, when in fact that's when we need the most to sit in silence and to let our brain just stick everything in the back where it needs to go. I also, on the topic of adult work, I also want to talk about the impact of what it's like to try to do your job when you feel like everyone's mad at you versus what it's like to try to do your job when you don't feel like everyone's mad at you. Because I see that get writ large a lot. I mean, I might have a bias toward this because I am characterologically. pretty worried about people being mad at me. So certainly when I was working in a school that was that could spin me out the most would be, you know, if I felt like maybe a whole team didn't understand what I was doing or wasn't on board with it, or if I felt like, you know, a family didn't understand. You know, so adult adult anger at me or adult judgment of me is definitely my own particular kind of trigger. So that might be why I pay a lot of attention to that when I see it in other people. But but I really do see that in other people, right? Like sometimes over the course of a year when I'm trying to support an educator, if it is a year where they are in some pretty gnarly conflict with a coworker that will really be the thing that comes up more often and more painfully, right? Even if there is a student that they really don't know what to do with. So I don't, for one, let me pause there. Do you see the same thing, or is this my own kind of bullied middle schooler nonsense? No, I do see that. I see, um, I see related to what you're saying. I see people, maybe I think that people that go into helping professions don't want to disappoint people. They don't. Yeah, they like maybe they're people pleasers. But I definitely, I will say last school year were many more examples that I was at least aware of than before of people not speaking to each other, working in the same school or even team. People really deeply hurt by each other or angry with each other. And I just, I just, it is so exhausting and resource-grabbing to have to navigate the hard jobs that we have while there's somebody that you interface with on a regular basis who you are not speaking with, or getting along with, or feel hurt by. And it breaks my heart for both people involved. I think there's always a complex situation around that. And I, I don't feel I do not feel judgment toward those people. I feel nothing but just sadness and compassion and a real wish that We could sit down and work that out because I like you. I'm also someone where if someone's mad at me, I have to perseverate on that and work on that until that is fixed before I can really function. I can't function with that. And so I just can't imagine, I mean I can't imagine what that would be like. And it's the most intense job when you work in a school or in any kind of a mental health capacity. It's so intense. Yeah. Well, and here's something I want to say about that particular intensity too, and it goes back to compassion fatigue as well. So, people who are helpers are, of course, vulnerable to compassion fatigue more than other people. But helpers who work with kids are the most vulnerable to compassion fatigue and sort of the cave person survival brain. The sense that I make of that, right, is because there's a lot of evolutionary bang for the buck, right, for our amygdalas being hyper concerned about everything going okay for children. Right? And so seeing everything not go okay for children, in particular fearing that something's not going okay for a child because we didn't do enough, all of that is incredibly visceral and corrosive and costly for the amygdala. And it also makes it really easy for adults to turn on one another, right, because if I've got a kid in you know in my care who I really you know am invested in and concerned about and another adult is taking an with them that's different from mine that is actually going to activate some of my mammalian mama bear stuff, right? which is a very amygdala type of anger that I think is different. I've never been an accountant, but I imagine that's very different than what an accountant might feel like if another accountant has a different take on like a spreadsheet that they worked hard on, right? So you know when so people are spun out when others are mad at them. And this particular environment is one where folks are likely to get a very mammalian brand of angry at each other if there is disagreement about what's going to be best for a kid everybody cares about. So it just gets so almost like, you know, a little bit cave person-y. And I really include myself in that, which makes sense because there are really skilled, smart, mature, grounded, healthy people can have very intense negative emotional reactions to a colleague that they can't really explain and that they don't want to have, and yet are having because, and what you're saying is a really good explanation of one possibility of why that might be. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So it's, it is a lot, you know, there, there's. a when Joelle and I were thinking about what we were going to talk about today, I always love talking with you, Joelle, because so far we have not talked about the thing we were going to talk about today, though it is related, right? But this is actually like new content that we didn't even know we were going to go into, but it's it's related to a framework that Joelle and I worked on together. In particular, Joelle and I had a very generative time during the the most COVID-y of the COVID time, right? Because all of a sudden, most of what was needed in education were regulation strategies, because it was inherently so terrifying and confusing. And so one thing we talked about back in that day was how to engage with your adult peers in a way that takes care of each other's nervous systems, right? So in a world where, in many ways, we are more vulnerable to being destabilized and stressed out by the adults in our midst, right? Versus the kids in our midst. And some of that is because we all have inner children inside of us somewhere who are afraid of getting in trouble, right? So like we can find ourselves as freestanding adults who still are like weirdly very afraid of getting in trouble with like an opinionated person on our team, right? But the the adult stuff is really hard. And we realized that sometimes if one adult is understandably super dysregulated, sometimes the way that discontent spreads on teams, right, can be if one or two people understandably are really hitting the roof and then they can sort of one by one destabilize the other adults on the team through a form of kind of barfing that dysregulation onto the next person. And then we also found an antidote, an antidote to that, where people can share their understandable concerns. They can even share the things that they're really super upset about. They can even share negative feedback with a colleague, but in a more kind of boundaried. digestible way that's unlikely to like light everybody's nervous system on fire. So we were thinking that we might outline that for you all today as well. And I also have this in PDF form. This is basically just three slides that Joelle and I have historically taught from a lot, that we'll also put in the show notes. But maybe this is a good time to transition to constructive complaining versus fear barfing. Joelle, do you have other things to say about the concept now that I've talked forever about it? Sorry. No, I think that, well yes, I guess I do. I think that it's important to vent. It's important to release stress with people that you trust I think it's important to have a sense of the big picture of relationships and make sure that the need to connect around distress has not become so dominant of the base of how we feel connected that it's almost like you have to have a problem in order to connect, and it takes over the loyalty, the need to feel the way that you're feeling, that loyalty. So I think that we have some real great strategies that we're about to go to, but I would say as you think about that, you also want to think about in this relationship, do we also share laughter and funny things? Do we connect around positive future oriented plans? And then also can we share what's really upsetting us? Because if there's an imbalance, it actually will be necessary or functional in the relationship to feel connected. To have a—oh, they talk about that in couples therapy too. I think that there needs to be maybe five positive interactions for each negative feedback one. Does that seem right? And that's sort of human nervous systems need to stay online in relationship. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So go ahead. Sorry. Oh no! So I was going to say the strategy that you and I talk about, which we each thought the other one invented. So at this point we don't remember who came up with this, but we really do think. It was one of us. So the strategy is to think of your vent as a newspaper article, and what you want to share is the title. So if Jillian says to me, " How was your day Rather than starting with the morning and going all the way up to now, or telling a very long detailed version, I'm going to give her, like, if my day were a newspaper article, what would the title be? So that's the first trick. And then if somebody is, if you are the recipient and somebody is sharing and they don't know to do the title, so basically if I give my title, Jillian gives her title. Now we can spend the short time that we have connecting on the title and bonding and asking if the other one needs help or suggestion or just see I've been there too, whatever, because what you want from a vent is to release stress, reduce isolation. Sometimes you want suggestions, but not usually. So if you use up all the time telling the entire article, we usually have finite amount of time with each other. Then you'll only get partway through, you'll overwhelm the other person, and you won't actually end up walking away feeling satisfied that you released or reduced isolation. I think that's exactly right. So if you're really looking for, yeah, you're really looking for, and you maybe are even looking for a dose of some. if not joy, at least a dose of lightening something up by holding it between two people. All of that gets lost. If you spend the whole time you have with somebody basically just retelling the long narrative of what you're about. Sometimes I have a great meditation teacher, Paula Tursi, who will say something like the nervous system or the brain can't really tell the difference between whether something is happening in real time or whether we're telling ourselves the story of it again. So if we're just venting without summarizing, we can also trick our brain into actually thinking that difficult thing is happening again. It can be a little bit of like a small T, let's say retraumatization of ourselves. Is that similar to like if I'm upset about something that's happening in the world and I read four articles about it or watch four videos, my brain might register that as four. That's now happened four times. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's a really good connection. And you will get this in the show notes, right? But here's, we call it sort of complaining, right? So step one, and this is similar to Joelle's great thought about just some kind of signal for like I need three minutes. So the first thing, if I'm coming in, let's say I need to like share something with Joelle, either with just something I'm upset about from outside or maybe with a challenge I'm having with her as far as a student we're supporting. The first thing I should do, if I can, is check for bandwidth or permission. So I might say to Joelle, 'Hey, I'd like to talk about my day' or 'Hey, I have some questions about the student we're supporting. Is now a good time?' Right? And then I would wait, hopefully, for Joelle to say yes or no. If Joelle says no, I'm going to really try to use my distress tolerance strategies and, you know, allow that boundary. Maybe I can go walk to the drinking fountain. Maybe I can find another colleague to talk to for. a second. Maybe I can breathe out twice as long as I'm breathing in, but I do the best I can to respect that. No. And Joelle also does the best she can to be diligent about circling back with me when she's ready. But if Joelle says, 'Hey, yeah, this is a great time,' then my job, yeah, is to try to drill it down to, okay, what's the headline in the first paragraph of what I'm worried about, right? Or what I want to talk to Joelle about. While Joelle, I think you're right that we, you know, when we're venting, we're not usually looking for solutions. There is, you know, you and I talk a lot about how the brain likes purpose and accomplishment. If it's, if it's feeling. sort of overwhelmed or out of control. So I do think that there is room for helping our own. If I'm upset about something, it may help my mind to move on from it. If I have the experience of considering even one possible, like next step, let's say if not a solution, then a next step. So the third thing, I'm so step one check for bandwidth or permission. Step two drill it down to the headline in the first paragraph. And then step three remember that part of the point of this is for me to ask Joelle for help doing one thing to address a portion of the problem. Cause that will also cue her to be like, okay, now we're going to construct like a resilient. narrative about this. We're going to help Jillian move your brain in the direction of a future where you know some of this can be resolved. Even if, like many of our big problems in schools, there's nothing either Joelle and I will be able to do that will completely resolve the whole thing. What are your thoughts on that summary so far, Joelle? Yep. Yep, I'm with you. And then, if I'm in this scenario, the one receiving your, um, if you, when you get to what I think is toward the end of the first paragraph. Yes, my job is to interrupt you with intention. Yes, so I'm going to intentionally interrupt because I want to make sure I understand. People are totally fine with you cutting them off or interrupting if what you're going to do is summarize what you just heard, so that you know that you're, they know that you're listening and that you make sure that I'm fault. So, I'm going to interrupt because I want to make sure I understand. It sounds like you're feeling to do that, and then you will maybe shift to right. Do you have a suggestion? Have you ever felt that way before? And then we'll move to the connection and the one takeaway, but if you're so heightened about it, you might move to a second whole paragraph. So my job as the listener is to, again, when I think you're at about. what would be the second paragraph interrupt again Ooh love it I'm going to interrupt again I want to make sure I understand it sounds like you're feeling to do that. Many people will then realize oh I'm like in the weeds. She's given me two themes. She's got it. I got a like who like like the the validating summary sentence that I just said is going to make you feel heard and make you feel like I'm here with you, which is the reducing is the reducing isolation or increasing connection need met. And you will have then just gotten two paragraphs worth of stuff off your chest. So at that point lots of people will shift to the strategy. or the connection or whatever. Some people who are really worked up will go to paragraph 3. Yeah, so if we're in paragraph 3, I know that this is probably not going to be productive, and I probably need to cut my losses and move on so that I am not going to get—oh, did I'm not going to get sort of overwhelmed or stressed by your stress. So what I'm doing while I'm listening to paragraph 3 is I'm planning a graceful exit. Oh yes, graceful exit! So when I think I'm at about paragraph 3, I'm going to say, you know what, I'm so sorry! I got it. I'm so, first of all, tell them I'm so glad that you told me because when you tell people that you're really appreciate. them telling you genuinely they will feel good even if you then leave. So I'm so glad, so glad that you told me. I've actually got a scoot, but I really want to connect on this later. And then you go, and you will leave them hanging. Remember, you listened and you gave two summaries, and they just weren't in a place to do anything other than swirl. So you did a graceful exit to sort of cut your losses on this interaction, and you will circle back to it another time. Bam! There we go. There we go. That's what I think. If you do that, if you have in your life, if you have a chronic fear barfer, and you do that intentionally, interrupt intentionally interrupt. graceful exit repeatedly. They will, without even realizing what's happened, they will sometimes get better at this, at the thought the thematic summaries that you're modeling at the end of each paragraph. Yes, and they will get better at keeping it short because they'll learn that you will only stay for so long. Yes, that's right. And you'll have taught them totally in through indirect behavioral modeling. You will have taught them to do better at venting, which means they're going to be healthier and get their needs met better. Yeah, oh that's such a great point. I never even thought of that angle. Yeah, you're helping the person. with In the most caring but clear way. And you're also having really good boundaries for yourself. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's beautiful. Yeah, I have nothing more to add on that one. Go ahead. No, I think that's good. So the takeaways around this are use those very brief pauses in the action. Just let your brain do its job, no new input, and then really practice productive venting. Yeah. Yeah. And remember that focusing on the adult relationship seems counterintuitive, and you may not want to do it because that's not why you got into this. But it will be so much easier. Your jobs will be so much easier. Your burnout will be so much lower. The kids. will really benefit too if y'all are doing the work to make your adult community healthy just like children in a family really benefit if the adults in the family are doing their work to make the adult community healthy. Yeah, and if we could just reset our expectations to like I guess a percentage of my job is going to be to work on my colleague relationships and the adults that come with all these kids. And I can be good at that and it can become maybe 15, 20% of my job. And I'll lean into that and then I think it's less frustrating when you expect that to be part of what you do. I think so too. And it makes sense that that should be part of what. We do because children are really impacted by the adult environment. Yeah, absolutely. Awesome! Thanks, Joelle. So good to see you today. Good to see you. Take care, everybody. Thanks, everybody. See you next time. Thank you for listening to another episode of Stance of Curiosity. Stance of Curiosity is an unscripted conversation between Gillian Boudreau and Joelle vanLent. While both are licensed psychologists, this podcast is provided for informational and educational purposes only. The content presented should not be considered a substitute for professional or mental health advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Listeners. should always consult with a qualified mental health professional whenever needed for specific concerns or questions related to their personal situation. Stance of Curiosity is produced by Jillian Boudreau and Joelle VanLent. Our cover art is by Aaron Lanute, and our music is upbeat indie folk by Twin Music. See you next time.